


Where Angels Fear to Tread

by foolishgames



Category: Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett, Supernatural
Genre: Crossover, M/M, crackfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-11
Updated: 2012-08-11
Packaged: 2017-11-11 21:52:08
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,469
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/483271
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/foolishgames/pseuds/foolishgames
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dean is possessed by – an angel? And this angel calls on a very unlikely ally for help…</p>
            </blockquote>





	Where Angels Fear to Tread

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted at livejournal March 2007

It wasn’t like Aziraphale was doing anything wrong. Strictly speaking. I mean, at the time, Crowley was over in Dover helping little old ladies across the street, doing good deeds, before he’d set up for a night of tempting the just. Crowley promised – a full day of good deeds before any tempting.  
So it all balanced out, right? The appropriate amounts of harm and good had to be done, so Aziraphale had to do his bit – or rather, Crowley’s bit – here in Canterbury.  
He handled tempting like a squeamish teenager handled a rat dissection in Biology - at arms length, with eyes squinted nearly shut and breathing through his mouth. Car brakes disengaged, and the vehicles rolled to sloping stops against walls or poles three feet away, undamaged. Men whose eyes he drew to the pretty girls walking by turned out to be gay, or more interested in their lunch. One telemarketer rang the same man sixteen times by mistake. Instead of getting annoyed, he asked her out for dinner.  
Aziraphale sighed, discouraged. He just wasn’t very good at the whole corrupting thing. He wondered how Crowley was getting on in Dover, then pictured the havoc that a well-meaning demon could wreak, and decided he’d much rather not know.  
Just before sundown, he found himself in the more touristy sections of town, and wandered down a back street – of which Canterbury had many – half-heartedly expiring parking meters and moving dog droppings under the feet of unwary pedestrians. Just as the sun sank beneath the horizon, framing the spire of the majestic Cathedral, he stepped off the pavement and was hit by a bus full of tourists.  
It was one of his least graceful discorporations ever. And that included that time in the middle ages, with the maypole and the yak.  
~  
You saw people possessed by demons in this job, more and more often, recently. Animals too, crazed with demons and mad with the lust for blood. Dean even swore up and down that “This time – in British Columbia, Sammy, you shoulda been there, it was awesome!” that he and their dad had dealt with a flock of demonically possessed sheep. Sam wondered what kind of damage a bunch of herbivores could do, bleat you to death? Throw their soft, woolly bodies at you until you suffocated? But he never said anything, because it was a memory that made Dean cackle happily which happened not nearly often enough.  
So, possessed people? All the time. Possessed animals? Occasionally, yeah, and entertaining, if reports could be believed. Possessed furniture?  
Yeah, not so much.  
They stood, arms folded, and looked suspiciously at the antique cabinet. The wood was dark red and the front panels were beautifully carved, with that unmistakable patina of age about the whole thing. The carvings might have been flowers or decorative scrollwork, but there were suggestions of faces among the seemingly random designs, and if you knew were to look, other, more sinister patterns.  
The guy who had so eagerly accepted “Simon Deveau’s” credit card was suspiciously keen to be rid of the innocuous-looking cabinet. If Sam hadn’t known that the last four families to own it had all been picked off by some malevolent force, one by one, he would have been surprised and pleased at the bargain price.  
Not that Sam was in any way interested in antiques. And he certainly wasn’t mourning the idea of having to destroy such a beautiful piece of work.  
He ran his hand over the carvings one last time, grimacing as his fingers came away with a light coating of yellow crystals. Sulphur had been embedded in all the cracks, like a particularly persistent dust.  
“Stop fondling the evil cupboard, Sam, and let’s get this over with.” Dean’s voice was clipped and slightly more than irritated. It seemed he felt demonic furniture was somehow beneath him. He glanced impatiently around the vacant back lot they’d chosen to do the exorcism in, as if looking for any witnesses, and back down at the journal, muttering to himself.  
Sam gave the wood one last pat and stepped outside the salt ring. “You do it, then, if you’re so keen.”  
Dean raised an eyebrow and said something under his breath about antiquing, stepped forward until he was right outside the protective circle and began to chant.  
The temperature had dropped after the sun went down, and he wasn’t dressed for the cold. Sam folded his arms around himself and kept an eye out for passers-by. The lot was in a new development, where there was plenty of building going on but very few residents, so the likelihood of witnesses was slim, but Sam’s eyes scanned their surroundings anyway, an automatic deferral to the proximity of houses, streets and cars to their business. It felt wrong do this in the middle of so much mundanity.  
The cabinet was making squawking noises now, its doors banging open and shut so hard pieces were starting to break off. Dean’s voice carried clear and calm above the cacophony, the Latin phrases slipping effortlessly off his tongue. For someone who didn’t believe in God, the old prayers certainly came naturally to him. Sam watched him, caught between sheer aesthetic admiration of the drama in the scene and the desire to properly display his appreciation of Dean’s fine, fine speaking voice. He was so authoritative. Sam had tingles.  
The wind was howling now, ripping through Sam’s thin sweater. With a sound rather disappointingly like a cat coughing up a hairball, the cabinet disgorged a thick cloud of oily black smoke. It briefly formed itself into a nearly human avatar, long enough to wheeze out a rude phrase in Dean’s general direction and make a gesture that might have been equivalent to sticking out it’s deformed, demonic tongue.  
“Bite me,” Dean suggested, and spat the last few Latin phrases.  
Grumbling, the demon went, and the night was still.  
Dean kicked the battered cabinet. “Think we should burn it?”  
“To be safe,” Sam agreed, and grabbed his ass. “You’re very hot when you speak Latin, you know that?” He bent his head to mouth at Dean’s neck.  
“I’m very hot when I’m doing anything, Sammy. You know that.” Dean dug around in the bag for the lighter fluid, his Zippo already in hand. He batted away Sam’s attempts to grope him. “Molest me later, antique boy. We need to – huh.” He paused, wearing an expression that suggested he had just swallowed a bug.  
“What?”  
“Did you feel that?” Dean tilted his head to the side, looking like he was listening intently.  
Sam looked around cautiously. Now that the ritual was over, the wind had dropped away to nothing, and the night was clear and still and silent. The probably-now-harmless cabinet lay on its side, unthreatening.  
“Um, no? Feel what, Dean? Are you okay?” Dean was shaking his head like he was trying to dislodge water from his ears.  
“Yeah, I just _I beg your pardon, could you possibly tell me where I am?_ ”  
Dean shut his mouth. Sam stared. “What?”  
Dean opened his mouth. “I said _Look, I’m terribly sorry for the inconvenience, but_ what the hell was that?” His eyes were wide, frightened.  
Sam clamped down on the panic rising up in his own chest. “Who’s there?” He resisted the urge to grab Dean and shake him.  
Dean looked cagey, and then his mouth seemed to open of its own accord. “ _America, then? Oh, dear. So sorry, I’ll just be off now._ Sammy, make it stop.”  
Jolted into movement, Sam ducked down and grabbed for the journal, grateful it was still out. He never took his eyes off Dean, standing frozen into immobility, as if terrified of what his mouth was going to do next. “Okay. In nomine patri, et filie,”  
Dean’s faced assumed an expression of cherubic benevolence. He even gave a little condescending chuckle. “ _Oh, no, dear boy, you have to wrong idea entirely. I’m not a demon at all._ ”  
Sam seized him by the shirtfront. “What are you? Get the hell out of my brother!”  
“ _I’m trying. Er, there seems to be a bit of a problem. This is most embarrassing…_ ”  
“What the hell are you talking about?” Sam demanded.  
Dean, or the thing that inhabited him, sighed. It was an expressive sigh, conveying a great deal of emotion. Sam thought, a bit meanly, that it sounded sissy.  
“ _I’m not a demon,_ ” Dean’s mouth said, in the oddly inflected accent Sam was beginning to recognise as the intruder. “ _Quite the opposite, actually. I mean you no harm._ What do you mean, just the opposite?” Dean’s voice – cutting off the other’s quite effectively - came out slightly panicked-sounding. “ _My dear boy,_ I’m not your dear anything. And you can’t expect us to believe that you’re some kind of – angel.” There was a pause. Sam watched his brother warily. Dean was going cross-eyed in an apparent attempt to look himself sternly in the eye, his expression flipping between scowling cynicism and long-suffering patience. “ _You believe in demons readily enough,_ ” the intruder pointed out. Dean scowled. “Not the same thing.”  
Sam intervened. “Okay, enough. You – look, do you have a name?”  
Dean blinked. “ _Er, Aziraphale._ ”  
Sam nodded. “And you’re an angel.” He waved away Dean’s protest and sighed. “Say we do take that at face value. What the hell are you doing in my brother and why won’t you leave?”  
Dean – Aziraphale – looked distraught. If he’d had control of Dean’s hands, Sam was sure he would have wrung them. “ _I don’t know! I got hit by a bus, and then – well, I was here! And now I’m stuck!_ A likely story. _It’s true!_ ”  
“I thought angels were immortal,” Sam pointed out, shifting from foot to foot in the cold air.  
“ _We are required to take human form,_ ” Aziraphale said, a bit snippily. “ _It has its benefits, but also its drawbacks._ ” There was a pause. Dean was scowling, an expression of intent concentration on his face. “Doesn’t explain why you’re in my head. Also, why you won’t leave! _I’m not sure about the second, but when I’m discorporated, I tend to gravitate towards – open minds. People praying, calling on the Almighty, that sort of thing._ ” There was another pause. “Not one word, Sammy.”  
“Not a one,” Sam promised.  
“ _Anyway,_ ” continued the angel, “ _I’m not really in your head. I’m just riding along. I can’t read your thoughts, you know._ ”  
Sam smothered the relieved expression trying to unfold on his face. There were things he really didn’t want any kind of angelic being spotting inside Dean’s head. “Okay, so what usually happens when you get – what was it?”  
“ _Discorporated. Well, normally I just go and ask upstairs for a new body._ Upstairs? You gotta be kidding me. _I assure you, I am perfectly_ I was being sarcastic. You don’t need to answer. Sammy, _Well, perhaps you should learn to guard your tongue. Sarcasm is the lowest form of wit, you know._ You mind not hijacking my mouth while I’m using it? _Oh, I do beg your pardon._ Whatever.”  
“Well, why don’t you do that, then? I mean, ask for a new body?” said Sam, torn between amusement, frustration and fear.  
Dean face went blank and there was a long pause. “ _I am currently – stuck – inside your brother,_ ” said Aziraphale, and it seemed to Sam that he was speaking very carefully. He wondered if angels could lie.  
“So what the hell are we supposed to do?” he asked aloud.  
~  
The drive back to the motel was a chore. Sam drove, because he didn’t trust the thing in Dean’s head, and Dean was eerily, stubbornly silent that whole way back. Sam considered trying to make conversation, but the fear of what – or rather, who – might be answering his questions, rather put him off the idea. He snuck furtive glances instead, watched Dean slouched in his seat, lips pinned tightly shut, his arms folded and tense.  
He pulled into the parking lot and turned off the engine. “Okay,” he said, for want of anything else. He looked at Dean again, and Dean looked back helplessly, but when he spoke, it was with the slightly nasal inflection and British accent of the intruder.  
“ _I really am terribly sorry. This isn’t ideal for me either._ ”  
Sam sighed, and resisted the urge to bash his head on the steering wheel. “Dean, you okay?”  
His brother nodded. “Yeah. I’m pretty sure he can’t take control of my body or anything. _I can’t._ And gosh, I’d sure appreciate if he stopped mouthing off when I’m talking.” A pause, no reply from the angel. “I think it’s okay.”  
Sam nodded tightly and didn’t look at his brother, because if he did, he’d have to crawl over and curl up in Dean’s lap, or grab him by the ears and plant a wet one on him, or reach out and touch his face gently to reassure himself. None of which were possible with something riding shotgun behind his brother’s eyes. “Okay,” he said again, and got out of the car.  
Dean followed more slowly, and once they got into the motel room, he seemed jumpy, skittish. His eyes darted around, looking at the mess they’d left it in that morning, the papers scattered over the table, clothes hung over the backs of chairs or dropped where they were. He shot Sam a desperate look, and his eyes flicked briefly over the beds, one still made and piled high with crap, the other obviously slept in, rumpled and stained. Sam nodded slightly.  
“I’m going to go shower,” Dean announced and took himself off to the bathroom, closing the door behind him. It had been a long time since he’d bothered shutting Sam out while he bathed, preferring to subtly encourage the whole getting-clean task as a team sport, but Aziraphale might get the wrong idea.  
Sam rubbed his forehead as he started to clean the junk off the spare bed. This whole thing was getting more complicated by the second. Even if the thing in Dean’s head was exactly who he said he was – something Sam still had his doubts over – there were certain aspects of their lives that would probably cause their celestial visitor to get the vapours, if he ever found out. Until Aziraphale was gone, they were going to have to be very, very careful.  
Glancing around, he snatched the lube and condoms off the nightstand and stuck them in his duffle, then smoothed the sheets on the used bed just as Dean came out of the bathroom.  
He wondered if there was a special circle of hell reserved for incestuous sodomites.  
Dean was red faced and looked irritated. “Something wrong?” asked Sam.  
Dean scowled. “It does not send you blind,” he said grumpily. “It’s a perfectly healthy _dangerously narcissistic_ outlet for tension.”  
Sam raised an eyebrow. “You’ve gotta be kidding me. With an angel in your head? Dude.”  
“Shut up,” said Dean. “Frickin’ kinky angel. _How dare you_.”  
~  
Sleep proved impossible, so Sam lay on his side and watched Dean instead, restless without his brother’s comforting presence. Dean lay on his front, sprawled out, facing away from Sam and didn’t move, though Sam knew he was awake.  
It complicated things, having an angel around. For the first time in a long time, Sam felt a tendril of shame curl in his chest at the thought of touching Dean. He longed for it, wanted to be wrapped around his brother so bad it hurt, but the idea of having an angel watching, and knowing, and judging, made him want to crawl into a hole and die.  
Because it had to be unholy, what was between him and Dean, despite the fact that it was the only comfort and love and security they had. He wondered, if he had to choose, what his choice would be. If the angel found out and said in his horrible, irritating way “You can’t do this, you’ll be damned,” Sam wondered if he would be strong enough to choose redemption over Dean. He wondered if that was even the right choice.  
He slept a little, just before dawn, and rose to find Dean’s bed empty, and neatly made. A note on the table said _Gone to get breakfast. If not back by 8, check local psych ward. D._  
Sam showered to pass the time, picturing Dean conversing with himself – and answering – at the drive-through of the local McDonalds. Then he jerked off over the fantasy of what he was going to do to Dean when they got him un-angelised, because if he was going to be struck down by a bolt of lightning for thinking bad things about his brother, he’d be McSparky the Lightning Boy by now.  
Dean was back when he got out, arguing with Aziraphale over the appropriate way to serve scrambled eggs and unable to find a compromise on beverages. “Hey, Sammy _Good morning. Did you sleep well?_ Do you mind? Sorry,” they greeted him.  
“Morning,” said Sam, snagging a muffin. “I slept fine, thanks. No nightmares.” He took a bite and sat down, his feet connecting with Dean’s under the table. He left them there, ankles entwined. “What’s on the agenda today?”  
“Find a crowbar to get this thing out of my head?” suggested Dean sweetly. “ _Well, really. As it happens, I do have a useful suggestion for a way to end this – unfortunate arrangement._ ”  
They both stared. Or rather, Sam stared, and Dean went a little cross-eyed and shook his head. “Why didn’t you say something before?” Sam demanded.  
“ _I only thought of it last night, as you two slept._ ” Sam nearly strained a muscle rolling his eyes, and Aziraphale huffed. “ _Look, do you want to hear my idea or not?_ Yes, okay, fine. Sam, stop poking the angel in my head. _I’ve already told you, I’m not really in your head._ Are you going to tell us your brilliant idea or not?”  
Sam rubbed his temples. Dean’s back-and-forth with himself confused him.  
“ _I have a counterpart in England. We’ll have to fly out and see him. He can get me out of you, and he can help me build a new body._ Wait, I thought you had to get a new body from, um, upstairs?”  
“Yeah,” said Sam. “And what kind of counterpart?”  
“ _An old friend,_ ” said the angel, “ _I’ve known him since the beginning. He’s helped me out before._ Okay, but the whole building a body thing?” Dean – or properly, Aziraphale – seemed to blush a little. “ _It’s complicated. Also not something we talk about._ ”  
Sam had his suspicions on that score, but kept quiet, since there was no way to talk to Dean without Aziraphale hanging around, and he might just be being paranoid.  
“I have a problem with this plan,” volunteered Dean, with a handwave. “Apart from the obvious point where I’m totally not going to let some guy I don’t even know who may or may not be good, based on the word of some maybe-evil thing that’s taken up residence inside my skull _I told you I’m not really_ shut UP Aziraphale – dig around in my head – what was I saying? _You have a problem with my cunning plan._ It’s not really cunning. I wouldn’t say cunning. Angels really shouldn’t be cunning, are you sure you’re an angel? _Of course I’m an angel. Are you saying you don’t believe the word of one of the heavenly host?_ I’m supposed to take your word as an angel that you are really, actually, an angel? _Hmm. Put that way, it does seem silly. I really am an angel, though._ Oh, yeah? Do you have wings? _Sometimes. I had a flaming sword once, but I, ah, lost it._ A flaming sword? Like a real sword, on fire? _Oh, yes, it was quite a mighty weapon._ ”  
…said Dean.  
“Oh, God,” said Sam, and covered his eyes. “Stop, please.”  
There was blessed silence from the other side of the table. Sam peeked. Dean – or maybe Aziraphale – looked sheepish. “Sorry, Sammy.”  
“Aziraphale? Dean doesn’t like flying. Any plan that involves Dean on a plane is a bad plan.”  
The face across from him – and he couldn’t tell anymore who was controlling it, which rather annoyed him – seemed to fall a little, then perk up. “ _Ah, well. I shall have to phone him. He’ll laugh himself discorporated, of course, but I know he’ll come._ ”  
~  
Crowley eyed the ringing phone warily. It might be Hell, calling to ask about the sub-standard tempting that had gotten done in Canterbury yesterday. Then again, it might be Aziraphale, missing since that time. He weighed his options, and gingerly picked up the sleek black handset.  
“Boggan, Boggan, Smeggan and Heel, attorneys-at-law,” he sing-songed brightly, and immediately felt a wave of warm affection over the phone line. “Hello, angel.”  
“ _Good morning, my dear._ ” That was all Aziraphale, from the amused tolerance to the fond nickname, but the voice was wrong.  
“What happened yesterday? You buggered up the job and vanished. If I have to muddy my suit to haul you over hot coals, I am going to be _vexed_.”  
“ _You concern is touching. I seem to have got myself in a bit of a jam, dear._ ” He sounded slightly embarrassed.  
Crowley gave a loud yawn, and polished his fingernails idly on his suit, despite the effect being lost with nobody to see. “How utterly amusing. Was a prostitute involved?”  
“ _Not precisely. I’m in the United States and I need you to come and get me._ ”  
“Why on earth would I do that? Can’t you just miracle home?” He paused, and something else occurred to him. “How did you end up in the New World, anyway?”  
“ _Really, my dear, nobody calls it that anymore. And I got hit by a bus._ ”  
“Really?” Crowley laughed aloud, a pretty, charming gurgle. He could hear other voices on the other end of the line, muffled like somebody was holding a hand over the speaker. “Angel, why can’t you just come home?”  
There was a pause of several seconds, during which Crowley smirked. “ _I’m stuck. I, um, inhabited a host – do you recall Madame Tracey? – only, something has gone wrong and I can’t separate. And his brother keeps looking at me like he wants to hit me with a car door and I know they have a working exorcism that would send me to hell and Crowley could you just please come and get me?_ ”  
Crowley picked himself up off the floor and straightened his jacket. Rolling around in fits of malicious glee was simply not dignified. “You owe me for this one, angel. Hold still a second and I’ll find you.”  
“ _Thankyou, dearest._ ” Aziraphale sounded exhaustedly grateful, and the line went dead.  
~  
Dean hung up the phone. “Well, that was weird. Your friend is kind of mean for an angel.”  
Sam was about to reply, despite the fact that the comment had not been addressed to him, when there was a knock on the door. He gave Aziraphale – or Dean – a narrow look, and answered it.  
Leaning against the doorframe, with the suggestion that this piece of wood had been grown, harvested and carved for no other purpose than to serve as a prop for this particular individual at this very moment, was a slim, elegant dark-haired man wearing an obviously tailored suit, designer sunglasses and a smirk. Sam stared.  
“Hello, precious child. I believe you’ve got something of mine?” suggested the individual.  
Sam recovered his wits. “You’re the angel? Aziraphale’s friend?” He didn’t exactly fit Sam’s mental picture of an angel. He looked more like a well-to-do mobster.  
The man paused, and his eyes flickered past Sam’s shoulder. “Of course. Call me Anthony.” He brushed past Sam, without Sam realising he had moved out of the doorway enough for a such a feat to be possible, and was over by the bed peering at Dean before the door was quite shut. “Hello, angel. You’ve got yourself into something of pickle this time.”  
Dean looked at him with a rapt expression. “ _Hello, my dear. I’m glad you’ve come._ ”  
Anthony’s face twisted into a grimace, and he touched Dean’s face. A moment passed in which Aziraphale tried to lean into the touch and Dean flinched away, resulting in a seizure-like twitch, and Anthony smiled almost gently. “Dear me. This could be tricky.”  
“ _Do you see what I mean?_ ” asked Aziraphale anxiously. “ _Stuck!_ Could you stop touching my face like that, please?” Dean’s voice was plaintive. Anthony removed his hand, absently wiping it on his trousers, and turned.  
“I see the problem. Yes, I do.” He hummed absently to himself and nodded.  
“Then you can fix it?” asked Sam, leaning against the closed door.  
The dark-haired man smirked. “Oh, yes. Quite easily, in fact, though I doubt you’ll like the solution.”  
Sam looked wary, and so did Dean, until Aziraphale took over with an expression of resignation. “ _I was rather hoping it wouldn’t come to this._ ”  
The smirk was reaching epic proportions, with a hint of a leer creeping in around the edges. “I’m afraid so, angel. Isn’t that why you wanted me to come for you?”  
“Could somebody please explain what is going on here?” asked Dean, looking more and more alarmed.  
“Of course, children. Now sit down and let uncle Anthony tell you a story. You see, Aziraphale can’t get out of your charming self because he’s got nowhere to go. So we have to build him a new body. It’s quite a simple process, really, he just couldn’t do it on his own.”  
“Why not?” Sam demanded. “Are you that much more powerful than he is?”  
“Really, what do they teach them these days?” wondered the dark-haired man. “Don’t you know anything? One person alone can’t make a new person. It doesn’t work that way. It takes two people.” The smirk returned. ”And they have a special kind of hug, you see, and then later-”  
“Oh, God,” said Dean in a heartfelt, hopeless tone. “You’re not serious.” He looked panicked, then sighed. “ _Crowley, stop baiting them. Calm down, dear boy. Nobody is going to ravish you. He’s only teasing. We don’t require that kind of contact for the process._ ”  
Sam eyed them suspiciously. “What kind of contact do you require, then?” He narrowed his eyes. “And why did you just call him Crowley? I thought his name was Anthony.”  
Crowley folded his arms and glared at Aziraphale, who looked sheepish. “ _I can explain._ ”  
~  
“ _Look, he’s not really all that bad,_ ” Aziraphale insisted. Sam tightened his grip on the vial of holy water anyway. “ _He helped avert the apocalypse a few years back._ God, would please just get out of me? _I’m trying, but I need Crowley!_ ”  
“No way,” snapped Sam, brandishing the vial. Crowley shrank away against the wall. “You stay away from my brother, demon.”  
“I have a name,” muttered Crowley, irritably watching Sam’s erratic movements. “I picked it myself. It’s a good name.”  
“What do you want from us?” demanded Sam. There was a demon right there and he didn’t know what manner of spirit was inside his brother, claiming to be an angel of god. “Why are you here?”  
Crowley rolled his eyes. “Nothing. I just want to get the angel and take him home.”  
“ _That’s so sweet, my dear. I didn’t know you cared_.”  
“Don’t read too much into it.”  
“Why would an angel and a demon be friends?” asked Dean in a small voice. “Doesn’t make sense.”  
Crowley rolled his eyes. “Convenience. He happened to be there, and he has excellent taste in wine.”  
“ _Because he’s always been there._ ” Aziraphale’s voice, filtered through Dean, fell clearly in the quiet room. “ _More than anyone. We’re the same. Less than what we were, and more. We want the same things._ ”  
“What?” asked Sam, and Dean shrugged.  
“ _For the world to remain pretty much as it is. For humans to keep on growing and learning and making mistakes and fixing them. To be left alone._ ” He paused. “ _A decent lunch at a reasonable price._ ”  
The demon snorted and looked at Sam, eyes gone yellow. “I could destroy you. I am more powerful than any hell-creature you’ve ever come across. It would be unwise to cross me.”  
“Then why haven’t you?” asked Sam, which was not what he meant to say.  
It was just a brief moment, but Crowley’s eyes cut across the room, to where Aziraphale and Dean were locked into immobility and indecision. Sam followed his gaze in time to catch the tiny smile that he’d never seen on his brother’s face. “ _Oh, Crowley,_ ” sighed the angel. “ _You do choose the strangest ways to express your affection._ ”  
Crowley scowled. “I just don’t want to bugger up our arrangement. Slaughtering a couple of your side’s soldiers’d do that right quick, wouldn’t it?” He sounded almost insulted.  
“ _Of course,_ ” said Aziraphale gently. He looked at Sam.  
Sam sighed, and put down the holy water. “Dean?”  
Dean shot him a look which somehow managed to convey frantic terror, bewilderment, fascination and the need to either jerk off or get laid without the disquieting feeling of a hallowed being quietly commentating, really soon please and thank you.  
“Okay,” said Sam tiredly. “Let’s do this.”  
~  
It didn’t feel much like a ritual. Dean and Crowley stood facing one another, and Crowley reached up to cradle Dean’s face between his palms again. Dean stood stiffly, unyielding.  
“Samuel,” said Crowley, his voice curiously deep and resonant. “I need you to stand behind your brother and anchor him.”  
“How?” asked Sam, slipping up behind Dean, close enough to feel the heat of his skin.  
“ _Skin-to-skin contact,_ ” Aziraphale replied. “ _Hold his hand or something. Dean, you need to touch Crowley._ Do I have to?”  
Crowley raised an eyebrow. “It’s got to be a two-way street, Dean. You give a little and I give a little. It won’t hurt.” He took Dean’s wrists and guided his hands up so that their poses were mirrored, each cupping the other’s face. Sam slipped his hands under Dean’s shirt, resting his palms against the bare skin of his waist. Dean gave a ticklish shiver, and then everything went still.  
It was nothing at first, a trick of the light, some dust mote gleaming in the space of Dean and Crowley’s intertwined arms. A little swirl of shape or colour, spinning up and fading away. Dean made a soft noise and pressed back against Sam. “Oh.”  
Crowley smiled. His eyes were no longer yellow, but a rather pleasant grey. “Do you see now?”  
Dean’s breathing was faster, and he was trembling a little. “ _Crowley,_ ” said Aziraphale. “ _Oh, my dear._ ” He sounded almost awed.  
There was definitely something there now, like a million particles all slowly collecting, like a backward explosion, or a flower unfolding. It twisted and writhed, and slowly took shape. Sam caught his breath.  
It was a tiny figure, curled in on itself. Not a baby – every limb was long and straight, a tiny fully-formed person with white wings budding on its back. As he watched, it solidified and grew, stretching out and filling in, a thousand details. The colour of its hair, the smooth jawline, the graceful configuration of shoulders and arms and throat coming together as if sculpted by a master. It was big enough to stand before them now, face peacefully empty, bracketed by the arms of its creators, like an embrace. Its pale skin caught the sunlight and reflected it, glowing and shining, almost too bright to look upon.  
Dean was gasping for air, his chest heaving, sounding very loud in the otherwise silent room. Sam tore his eyes away from the miracle before him and rubbed Dean’s stomach soothingly as feathers brushed over his face. Dean’s body jerked in his embrace and he made a soft, familiar sound, the little breathy gasp he always made right before he came.  
And then it was done.  
There was tearing noise, a loud cry, and Dean staggered backwards, released. The strength in his legs gave out and he and Sam crumpled to the floor. “Shh,” murmured Sam, and let Dean press his face into Sam’s neck. “It’s over. You did good.” He lifted his eyes and looked up. “Dean. Dean, look.”  
Dean looked.  
Crowley’s wings almost filled the room, enormous, apocalyptic, black as midnight; they curved in protectively around him.  
The other figure, cradled gently between his knees, was also winged. The snowy pinions spread out like a carpet across the floor of the motel room, curving uncomfortably to account for the bed. The angel was slim and pale, naked and beautiful and as sexless as a display-window dummy. A golden head lolled back against Crowley’s shoulder, and he stroked the fine hair with one elegant manicured hand.  
“Did it work?” asked Dean softly.  
Crowley looked up and tried to summon a smirk. It came out looking more like a genuine smile than anything they’d yet seen from him. “Oh, yes. He’s here. Wake up, angel.” He ran his fingers through the angel’s hair and tugged gently. “Aziraphale. Rise and shine.”  
With a sleepy sound, Aziraphale opened his eyes, blinking. “Oh. Good morning.” He sat up. Crowley somehow managed to make it look as if he hadn’t been cuddling the angel at all, let alone stroking his hair.  
Realising that they were still intertwined, Dean freed himself from Sam’s embrace with a brief knee-squeeze that promised good things later. “It worked?”  
“Apparently so,” mused Aziraphale. His voice was lighter than Dean’s, musical and pleasant. The angel stood, and looked around, taking in the little room, Crowley on the floor looking pleased with himself, his own wings getting in the way. He frowned, and crossed to the mirror. “Oh, Crowley. You didn’t.” He peered at himself with distaste. “Well, we’ll have to fix this.”  
Sam couldn’t see what the problem was. Admittedly, his mental image of the angel, going by his fussy manners and slightly condescending tone, had been something along the lines of a middle aged man in tweed, possibly with a receding hairline and a paunch, but still. The angel looked – like an angel. Features that would have made Michelangelo weep, clear pale skin, golden hair.  
Dean and Sam exchanged looks. Crowley smirked. “Something wrong, angel?”  
Aziraphale folded his arms. “I have a reputation to maintain,” he scolded. “I run a bookstore, Crowley. I can’t go around looking like this. Don’t you remember the last time?”  
“You should consider it a compliment, angel.” If Crowley kept smirking like that, his face was going to freeze that way. “She really wanted you. Bad. And she had good taste in men.”  
“Horse,” said Aziraphale briefly, turning away from the mirror.  
“Vicious rumour,” replied Crowley calmly. “Started by me, of course.”  
Dean cleared his throat a little. “So, this is not what you normally look like, then?”  
Aziraphale scowled. “I should think not. This is Crowley getting creative.” He looked down at the bare skin between his legs. “And he didn’t even finish!”  
Crowley actually laughed. “Oh, I’ll get to that part. Later, when I have time to… do the thing properly. Come on, angel. We should be going.”  
Aziraphale blushed, and Sam and Dean looked back and forth between the two of them. “You mean,” began Dean, a sly smile dawning on his face. Sam felt a grin beginning to form at the implication – Crowley’s sly comments, the unusual affection between them, Aziraphale’s blush, the intimacy of the life-creating ritual.  
“Must be going!” squeaked Aziraphale. “Very sorry for any inconvenience. Don’t mind Crowley, he’s just teasing!”  
Crowley’s laugh was a lovely thing, clear and bright and unhurried. “Oh, be calm, angel. These are the last two on earth to judge anybody in that department. Right?”  
Sam flushed red, but Dean stepped up and pressed his palm against the small of Sam’s back. “We won’t tell if you don’t.”  
Crowley smirked.  
~  
The angel and demon had to winch in their wings and put them away to fit through the tiny door, and once Crowley had miracled up some clothes for a protesting Aziraphale, they were on their way.  
“Back to England?” asked Aziraphale hopefully, buckling his seatbelt. He didn’t ask how the Bentley had gotten to the parking lot behind the motel. It was usually better not to know, with Crowley.  
Crowley grinned, showing unusually long canines. His eyes, hidden behind their sunglasses again, might have been any colour. “Nope. Been too long since I’ve been to this continent. I’m off to stir up trouble for Azazel, the smug bastard.”  
Aziraphale groaned and shook his head, and his hair fluttered and swirled pleasingly. A woman walking by the car swooned. “Oh, not this again. Crowley, just because his domain is an entire continent and yours is a tiny island doesn’t matter at all. You watch over England for heaven’s – for goodness sake.”  
“And when England ruled half the world, that actually meant something,” said Crowley loftily, twisting the key in the ignition. “Besides, I hear Azazel has big plans. Big, nasty plans. Why, it’s practically your duty to stop him, angel.”  
Aziraphale considered trying to continue his sulk, but felt a tiny, pleased smile begin to form.  
“That’s more like it,” said Crowley, and stuck a tape in the tape deck. The label read “Best of Queen,” but the music pouring from the speakers for the next three hours turned out to be “Greatest Hits of Classic Rock,” and they drove off under the noonday sun to the sound of “Back in Black.”  
~  
Dean’s mouth was hot against his throat, wide open and wet. Sam squirmed up, running his hands over Dean’s chest and back, touching every part of him that he could reach.  
“Fuck,” muttered Dean into his neck, pawing clumsily at Sam’s jeans. “Fuck, I was scared to even think it, Sammy, scared to think about you, because what if he knew, what if he saw. I just.” Whatever he meant to say next was drowned out when Sam brought their mouths together hard, kissing his brother in a clash of teeth and tongue.  
Later, Sam curled up at Dean’s back, breath ghosting over his spine. His fingers traced patterns over Dean’s belly, idly. Dean touched his wrist, not stroking, just holding, feeling the pulse beneath the thin skin. “Do you ever think that we’re damned for this?” Dean asked quietly. “Despite all the people we save, do you think this is enough to cancel it out?” He didn’t sound upset over the idea, just idly curious. Sam knew it was a serious question, and he smiled a little at the lack of concern in Dean’s voice.  
Sam thought about Aziraphale, going straight to his natural enemy for help, and Crowley, cradling the vulnerable newborn angel. “If we are,” he said into Dean’s ear. “If we are, it’s worth it.”


End file.
